


those stars recalling your goodbye

by Graysworks



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Age Swap, Allura Lives, Black Paladin Keith, Blue Paladin Veronica, Fluff, Humor, M/M, Nothing Hurts, Role Reversal, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Sparring, get thee buckled in, green paladin Matt, red paladin shiro, yellow paladin older!hunk, you get the gist now on to my favs;
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-10-05 20:51:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17332124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Graysworks/pseuds/Graysworks
Summary: Seasons one and two, but Keith and Shiro are age swapped/role swapped. Veronica in Blue, Matt in Green, Allura in Badass Mode All Day Long, Hunk in Yellow and Shiro in Red; basically what the team and sheith would look like with this line up.





	those stars recalling your goodbye

**Author's Note:**

> HEY YALLS guess who's happily ignoring canon and back on his bullshit? Yes, yours truly is here to distract the terrible end to s8 with *drum roll* ALTERNATE REALITY SHENANIGANS
> 
> All you need to know is that Shiro is nineteen ish, Keith is twenty four ish and has a ponytail because I'm weak, Allura and Lotor are age swapped, Hunk is Keith's age, Veronica and Matt are Shiro's age, Coran's the same bc I uhhhhh ran out of characters, and the title is from a gorgeous piece by M83
> 
> Enjoy!

When Keith crashes to the desert ground in an alien pod, he's half convinced that he's dead. Later, Veronica will scoff and tell him the odds, Hunk will laugh about how karma was just really out to get Iverson, Matt will taunt something about how even the fates make mistakes sometimes and Shiro- Shiro will have that face on that says he's in deep thought, and walk away more often than he doesn't. It's an old fear, but one he hasn't brought himself to approach yet.

He lands and the Garrison tries to kill him. At least, its the impression he gets at first when there are gloves shoving his head down against a sterile, pale surface and masks in his peripheral spiking a familiar panic through his bones, all this before he sees the needles- and then all bets are off. There's no use appealing to logic here. All that's left to be done is kicking out to catch the closest lab-coat across the middle, thrashing his way out of the restraints as one of them finally nabs him with what he desperately hopes isn't a sedative; his feet hit the floor, his fist makes contact with a face in indignant grunts and splintering plastic, and the door is right there. His lungs are sucking in Earth air for the first time in months as he squares up for another duck-and-punch, desert sprawled to the left like a waiting dream.

Most of the guards have weapons, but only a handful actually draw on Keith. It closes something tight and instinctual like a fist in his chest before the first one goes off at his feet -a warning shot- and ricochets off the grated walkway in a clang that gets lost to the chorus of shrieks going up somewhere near the cliffs, but he doesn't have time to have a crisis over public opinion, not when there are bodies on the ground and Galra in the sky. When a stockier guard wearing orange grabs for him, Keith doesn't hold back.

His first mistake. Emerging claws and fangs and three armored staff with gouges down their arms later, the sedative starts taking effect enough that he nearly misses the ring of explosives going off farther back in the quarantine area and the scrambling tech, though blinking lights and screeching alarms are hard to miss even in the state he's in. Someone with a yellow headband and a shorter pilot in a cadet uniform push a generator in the path of the next horde of lab coats trying to push in, and Keith's vision starts to get shaky. He thinks he sees Katie for a second, but the build is smaller, wrong.

"-et me through, let me through!" someone shouts. Keith's legs give out on him. "Oh, fuck, fuck- oh my god..."

He slides down against something dusty and gritty and unmistakably _earth_ in a way that disorients worse than anything else so far. The shade of shock in gray eyes tries to be the last thing he sees, but oh, Keith would know Shiro's reaching hand in any universe.

What happens next comes through a haze of smoke and grasping oblivion. Arms around him, under him, wind in his face, frantic voices and explosions to their back. He rolls into the warm mass when they lurch to a stop and then spirals through the rush from there. When he finally comes to, it's in a bunk stuffed with sheets that smell like alien and a collection of voices the furthest thing from that. The mission nags insistently at the back of his head, pushing for motion, answers, anything, but there's a hand pressing him down as soon as he tries to sit up. The room spins when he searches for its owner. "Takashi...?"

"Oh, _Keith_ ," murmurs Shiro, but it's deeper, his figure bigger and his face pinched when it swims into focus. Keith is dead- he knows this, understands this, even embraces it when the pristine metal of non-human tech registers around them and in the background because if he's dead then that means Shiro is not in danger. No; Keith is dead, and Shiro is still a lanky, all-legs cadet half the universe away, chasing his records and living a good life far beyond the reach of a warrior-like extraterrestrial army, sure as hell not pulling Keith up somewhere in the depths of an alien ship. "Fuck, you scared me. _Asshole_ , don't laugh, you _scared_ me."

"Sorry," Keith manages, but relief is cracking through three layers of residual fear at last, and when he crushes Shiro into a hug it's the least he can do to mask his giddy shaking. "Sorry..." It rushes in like adrenaline and strong arms returning the gesture around him, Shiro's wet eyes when he draws back to ruffle his short hair leaving a stain on Keith's ragged shirt like if he doesn't look at him, he's afraid he'll disappear. Keith thinks the same feeling might swallow him whole when he forces his focus to the rest of the space. A couple of voices in the front putter out when they notice him awake, and he recognizes the faces but not the names; a man with an engineer's uniform and yellow headband, dark skin like the brunet beside him with glasses and a pointed face, and-

"Holt?" Keith starts, setting one hand on Shiro's shoulder when he draws back, not far by any means, but enough that an old anxiety twists up in his gut. The cadet nods his greeting, subtly pocketing something that looks vaguely as if it's been wrenched from the ship's heart. Fuck, fuck. How did he manage to pick up strays while unconscious? " _Shiro_ ," he half questions, half realizes, reproachful enough that his friend looks away although the defiant set to his jaw surfaces in a familiar enough movement that Keith expects an immediate confession.

"They volunteered," he says, short but considerate. "We didn't have a choice, the Lion took us without asking and that warship... it would've fired on Earth otherwise. The Garrison was trying to lock you up, Keith. They were trying to-" here he pauses, jaw moving again in discomfort.

Matt steps up to finish, cut and dry, "they were gonna put you in a hospital bed and poke you 'til you stopped turning purple." Without giving him a minute to process, he adds, "we were the ones that scrambled camp, sir, Shiro was just trying to get them to reconsider. Negotiations kinda fell flat after their tech went haywire, so we split on his hover and ended up," he knocks on the bunk alcove lightly, "in this thing once our hide-out was made. You can thank Veronica for that one."

"They had all of you on ground control?" Keith asks, eyes skidding to Shiro. He opens his mouth, reddening to a defensive shade before the big man near the back gets to answering first.

"They had _me_ on ground control," he clarifies. "As in one, singular, _silence bound_ engineer, at least until somebody," he gives Matt a pointed glance, "hacked my equipment and patched into the CCTV feed. Not cool, by the way. Guess who's filing paperwork when we get back to the States, huh? Ohh, McClain, your brother is gonna have me for _breakfast_ when he finds out what we pulled down there." The name registers and the resemblance clicks, but Keith is still trying to wrap his head around how the cadets even knew to _look_ for some sign of unrest before his pod hit the desert and Garrison vehicles hit the road. When he tries to move out of the bunk, he fails in a swaying lurch that's part lingering dizziness and part external shaking that jostles what he starts to recognize as a sub-cockpit fixed with living quarter furnishings, but the sound of dying engines and the fact that they don't move again say enough about what it was. They've just landed somewhere.

"I've been able to decrypt the pre-programmed flight path while you were out," Veronica says, like it's an explanation. "Altering it was out of the question, whatever Holt tries to tell you."

"Ouch, McClain."

"Look, those fail-safe transmissions were armed and ready, don't try to tell me they weren't-"

"Uh, _guys_ ," the engineer interrupts, and nods at the external cams as they pop up in windows across the cockpit screen, displaying wide fields and a sprawling body of water bordered by a structure that looks unmistakably civilized. "I think we've got bigger things to worry about."

Shiro still hasn't let go of his arm. Keith doesn't intend to question, but the cadet's always had a way of picking apart the puzzled bits of his quiet, and it isn't a surprise when he answers unprompted, "whatever they did to you, I want to help. Keith, I- _have_ to help." The timbre of it is new, and the confidence is different from the day he left Shiro behind on a launch pad, gold on his shoulders and steady warmth in his smile and the essence of him now is the same, but there's a dozen little bits changed in the earnestness. Keith spends a few long seconds trying to piece it together before Shiro adds, "we'll find some way to get you back to normal, together, I promise-"

-and something close to fear dilutes like poison in his Galra blood.

 

* * *

 

Keith comes back smaller, quieter like the version of the pilot Shiro had near revered all those years earlier, dark and brooding and all but this time even more distant, somehow; he cuts down the anxious conversation between princess Allura and the others in two concise sentences.

One of them being, "my experimentation was headed by some sort of Altean witch, so if we can find out why she's messing with quintessence then we'll probably find out what she wants with humans too." The princess goes very still, short hair like moonlight swishing from when she'd turned her head at the words. Nobody seems to grasp them at the time except Shiro because, try as he might, the wicked lines and curves of raised skin aren't hard to miss beneath Keith's rolled sleeves, and his claws were forefront in the desert fight- at least, before his collapsing mass tunneled Shiro's vision like something from a bad dream, before his slitted eyes went round and relieved at the sight of Shiro, before, before. Sometimes it seems like the past has become their new present.

And then they bust their Lions out of the corners of the universe. And then the Castle gets attacked. And then Keith's broken, chained body is straining to lunge at Sendak like he still believes after all this time that no one else would protect him for it, and then some part of Shiro goes there, _purpose_ , purpose like nothing the Garrison ever expected he could handle even at peak conditions and then, and then, and then some. They take off toward the Balmera with a captive in the cargo hold and a couple in the kitchen skirting around the topic. Keith is hurting, that much is obvious. Shiro's ashamed at how eager he is to distract.

The Castle is endless, and Veronica's already scouted out the studies, libraries, archives, informative theatres, educational rooms and anything else to do with communications or history that could come in handy on their run through the universe; officer Hunk on the other hand takes the Altean rations cellar by storm and interns under Coran's watch in the fine arts of several allied cultures, and a dozen more that they'll need to be versed in before attempting any sort of intergalactic coalition. Matt spends night and day agonizing over rehabilitating some of the internal systems, probably to clear his mind off of the never-ending worry over where the Galra could have taken Katie and his father after they were separated from Keith. Said pilot has already confided all he knows to the rest of the team. His face was haggard by the time it was all out on the table.

It's not lacking color by the time Shiro's finished with him on the training deck. Keith's always been a pull-no-punches fighter, but there's something primal about his style now that only comes out in the little moments that he thinks Shiro isn't paying attention to. It's hard not to pick up on. It's also hard not to notice the way every hit he lands is lighter than the last.

"You don't have to go easy on me," Shiro pants, but only when he's got a knee wedged in Keith's back and a forearm pressed tight enough over his neck that red crawls up the exposed side of it, shining with sweat and stuck with long, long pieces of black hair that must've been regulation short _once_. "I'm not a kid, Keith, and I'm not gonna break." It doesn't take long after that for him to tap out. Another thing they don't touch on; his body's in the best condition it's going to be in for probably the better half of the next two years, and he's worked hard to keep it that way, even more now that there's a fight to be had. All that anger doesn't go away so easy. There've been too many people telling him that he can't strain himself, shouldn't apply for that hop, won't be able to keep this up much longer-

"I always knew you'd catch up to me one day," Keith says, smiling behind his water pack, all leg and ripped sleeves and corded muscle where he's sprawled out onto the training floor and Shiro is half inclined to stay there all afternoon, just to hear the way gravel sounds like honey when it slips off his teeth. It was no secret in the Garrison; the only one to get through to him on bad days was a gangly, overly-optimistic bundle of raw talent and _yes sir_ 's, but it's different here when Shiro rolls up on his elbows, half a head taller, broader and wider by some irony that dictated how where one of them was stripped to lean survival mass, the other filled in like the fates had to compensate. It's some universal equilibrium, he supposes. Keith's eyes skim over the new width of his shoulders and dart away like they're having the same thought.

He smiles before he leaves to help Hunk with some matter or another though, so Shiro counts it a win and tries not to flush too deeply over dinner afterward, engaging in as much small talk as he can to keep his focus off of the way Keith's fresh-washed hair leaves trails of water across his neck. Nobody comments, but he isn't sure the tactic exactly works, either.

Their encounter with Rolo and Nyma is telling. Hunk sees through their guise within minutes, and it's only by dividing trust among the team that they take off with one of the Lions. Up until now Keith's only had Shiro running defensive maneuvers through the star system that they'll have to cross toward the Balmera, but as soon as Veronica radios that she's been stranded, he gives an order that none of them quite believe at first.

"Wait," Hunk says over the comm, "I'm all for taking these guys down a notch, but that meteor field is pretty intense-"

"-and Shiro is our second youngest paladin," Allura cuts in, unforgiving but painfully obvious in how panicked the thought makes them all. Matt starts to argue something about what she's trying to say about their _youngest_ paladin, Veronica pitches in with dissent as well while Coran rattles off old statistics like they're _relevant_ somehow, but Keith's stubbornness won't be challenged like his decision. He mutes their shared channel and comes over quieter than he's sounded in all the battles they've flown into over the past week or so.

"You have every right to refuse, Shiro." God knows what kind of face he's making on the other side. Shiro's heart tries to escape from his sternum out of anticipation. "I know I haven't exactly been the best mentor, or leader- and if anything happens to you, I-" He pauses, so abruptly that Shiro almost wonders whether the connection's been cut, but then a crackle of static comes through, and the silence extends like a run-on sentence, unspoken.

Shiro wishes he could reach through the frequency and pull him close when he answers, "don't talk like that, Keith." He taps his fingers against the control stick, nervous in that way he only gets around the comet he's been tailing for years. "I'm fine, don't worry about me. Besides, you're- the best friend I could've ever asked for, and you know that." It comes out in a rush of air, but it must resemble amusement enough that Keith doesn't pick up his dawning alarm in how earnest the realization sounds to his own ears. Oh, fuck. _Fuck_.

"Go get 'em, Takashi," Keith responds, lighter.

"Yes, sir," Shiro sends back, and has to fight a grin the entire time he's off and pinning that ship, shifting into over gear while that comet gets closer and closer.

And closer. The Balmera unites the team like how Sendak tore them down, and what starts as one night of celebratory tomfoolery becomes a handful marked by mutual oversharing, emotional and otherwise as proven when Hunk sheepishly rolls up his sleeve to show off some of the botched tattoo he had done on his bicep, and Veronica is in tears of laughter when she rolls up a pant leg to reveal hers, far poorer done and half finished. Both are better explained through their mutual source of trickery, but all Shiro takes away from the group's collapse into exasperated giggles is that this _Lance_ guy is someone he shouldn't trust to recommend any sort of body modifications in the future. Matt agrees behind his Altean, red solo cup equivalent. He's taken a break from scanning alien networks for leads on his sister, but only because he stumbled across a lab in one of the lower decks that wasn't... technically a _science_ lab, though if one tried to bring up the distinction it would only end in a long winded lecture and shame. For these reasons Shiro hopes none of the others ask.

Allura, the humans find out one of these nights, has a rather large gap in her memory of when the last time it was that she played a board game on days between skirmishes while her health returns, collapsed in the lounge with the others to fall asleep to some old, badly translated movie, or done really anything in the time between finishing academics and moving on to work with her father in Altean diplomacy. This of course horrifies Veronica and Hunk, traumatizes, in a sense, Matt- and prompts a quick tutorial on Shiro's part into how exactly beer pong works. She gets the hang of it extremely quickly, but that turns out to be beginner's luck. Keith offers a hand, reserved though he's been for the better half of the night and overlooking the fact that an extra hand doesn't exactly _lend_ to learning this anyway, but Shiro doesn't fully grasp what bothers him about it until Veronica sends a disastrous wink at the rest of the group. Even then, insinuations have never held up much when they've been about Keith in the past.

Shiro doesn't lose sleep, anyway. Not yet; there's a time for that after the Castle glitches and goes dark like a poorly-executed holodeck imitation. The bots hunt them through their own halls for what must be days, daring the team to make a plan, a sound, _anything_ while Alfor's corrupted figure of multi-chromatic blue haunts the walkways like a prowling ghost. He's faceless and silent. The corridors flicker with broken greens and blues that shut into blacklight in unexpected moments. Every room takes on a fear that none of them dared confide except to the blinking confirmation of the record button on the tablets Allura had handed out that first day. After one too many rows of pristine medical machinery and the poisonous scent of antiseptic, Shiro stops opening doors.

Keith has it the worst because his fear is a physical one. Sendak sits in demure stasis below deck while they scurry around corners like rats in a maze, but he comes alive after the team agrees that someone needs to check in on him to see whether the memory-extraction has worked, and Keith volunteers in a second- because of course he does. Whatever occurs behind closed doors doesn't come up afterward, but his broad back is a line of tension when they lock themselves in the lounge for the night. He's sitting up to keep watch. Shiro knows without asking, in that way everyone who knows Keith knows what quiet honor looks like in little moments, the same way Shiro knows what to say when he takes up the space to his left, habitual and impulsive all at the same time.

"Takashi?" Keith asks, half breath when his shoulder has almost stopped shaking under Shiro's hand.

"Yeah," he says. _Yeah, I'm staying_ , he doesn't say, but maybe it's another thing Keith fills the blank in with and has since they fell into sync, but maybe it's part of the reason they clicked in the first place. Shiro shifts to wrap his arm fully around Keith's shoulders. The way he turns in closer when they fit together is weary limbs and leaning warmth, dark brows furrowed over dark lashes and it's almost funny now how they used to call him black sheep, golden boy's looming shadow, _he might explode in a whirl of crimson and silver, Takashi, but stars always fade like ink into the night and prodigies will burn out that way too._ His grandpa's half-amused warning carves out a red-trimmed irony in his chest. Keith starts again, and it doesn't sting so much.

"I missed you every day," he whispers, cracked, and Shiro whispers back that he'll sit with him every night to make up for it. Keith huffs something exasperated and fond, and they don't talk about it again until Sendak is off the ship and Allura's grief echoes through halls that seem even emptier than before Alfor's ghost amplified the hollow heart of the ship. He takes Shiro up on the offer. They've shared before after late nights and cram sessions, but it's different somehow.

Different, and better. Being needed is an addictive feeling, but Shiro embraces it like he slings an arm around his friend in the dark, slipping off easier and easier when there's a heartbeat under his hands.

 

* * *

 

Keith is human.

He's also stubborn, confused by social interaction even after suffering through it so long at the Garrison, and part Galra- but irrevocably, painfully, human. A year in the witch's lab didn't make for much peace every time his eyes shut, whether willingly or with control of his own body wrestled from him, but when Shiro crawls under his covers it all ebbs away like a fuzzy dream for a while. He gets used to it far too quickly. 

Shiro is the kind of unexpected that haunts him at first, but the bright in his eyes doesn't take long to convince Keith that this is the best thing to happen to him in years, maybe longer. Regardless, there's a guilt he can't place in seeing how quick the Red Paladin jumps into danger, guns blazing, righteous fury and fight in the lines of him like something out of a classic hero's tale that ends in tragedy. There was no question about his eligibility for at least one extended mission out into deep space, but the higher ups always denied him on some principle they'd hid behind like a moral statement. Keith doesn't forget this and it probably shows in the way his back can be found to Shiro's in any given ground skirmish, but it's hard not to forfeit some of that gripping regret in favor of cataloging the way his grin lights up the room at the end of long missions, or the content in his sigh when Keith wakes first and wrestles his way out of the tangled sheets. Their friendship expands and warps in whatever way it needs to. 

Sometimes- that means sparring the frustration of slow progress away. Sometimes it's Shiro's absence from higher risk missions that he'd protest to success with anyone else, but Matt's young too and Keith isn't a risk taker, not when it comes to lives at stake. He guesses the tension is still there underneath everything and waiting for some kind of absolution, but they only come close once Sendak's memories get cross-referenced with the data from the downed Arus invasion and Veronica's mouth hangs open with what she finds; a Galra station, a _big_ one, and a prime point of access to tap into all the Empire's secret weapons routes that Allura immediately moves on seizing. After a terse discussion about danger assessment, everyone's in agreement on their roles.

It goes south quickly and spectacularly. After some complication, Allura gets left at the station after throwing Shiro back out, Keith uncovers some new horror involving quintessence harvesting that _reeks_ of druid meddling even before the beaked menaces show up, and there's no choice in the matter of what to do next; as much as his instincts are screaming at him to pull back and look at the bigger picture, Coran and Hunk are right. Allura in the hands of the enemy gives them an unimaginable advantage. Allura in the hands of the enemy- is a nightmare of epic proportions.

The fallout tears everyone apart at the seams, but the individual action they all take sews the threads back together wrong and cuts them into pieces like razor wire. Attacking head on with Voltron fails. Splitting up to get into the base fails. Keith's attempt to take down the witch before she gets her claws in him again fails, fails, and reaching the princess without endangering the others fails just to add insult to -literal- injury. Veronica and Hunk keep up a steady stream of panic while trying to shoot Zarkon down outside the hanger, but one sign of pain from Keith has Shiro and Allura bursting through the doors and firing on the witch, making the final sprint back to their Lions a heart-racing and blood-boiling endeavor. Keith doesn't notice the stumble in Shiro's gait before they load up and take off. Everyone is home free, the wormhole is right there, they've made it, _somehow_ -

-and then they're gone again. He watches the Lions slip across the universe one by one, like something out of a bad dream, slowed to one thousandth of a second and happening all too quick at the same time. Impacts blackens his racing thoughts like a sledghammer to the temple. When he shakes himself awake, that's exactly what it all felt like.

"Shiro," he tries first, because the Red Lion was the only other he saw falling into the atmosphere with him. Dust chokes up his lungs; the cockpit is stagnating in it, barely a thin strip of sun falling across the console to light, unhelpfully, on how dim it is. When static picks up through his separate helmet comm, he calls louder, "Takashi. Report, Takashi. Damn it, _damn_ it!"

"Keith? _Keith?!_ "

He fights his way out of the seat, but some wound flares up along his side and slows him down. "Oh my god." Everything in him aches, burns, cries out relief at a name. Garrison fights have been in the rearview mirror for years, but in the moment he's a temperamental junior officer with too many warnings under his belt already, pegged to be kicked out if they can't shoot him into some remote corner of the universe first. "Shiro- can you see Black, can you see anything-"

"No, no, there's nothing but craters. Are you hurt?" He must hesitate too long before answering, because Shiro's voice jumps a half octave. "Keith, okay, okay- I have a lock on your position. Just stay there, alright?"

"No, I can meet you halfway-"

"But you don't have to," Shiro cuts in, gentler, and silences him again. "You don't have to go at everything alone, least of all _this_ \- please, Keith, trust me." There's already motion on the other end, the promise of protection wrapped in sun-warm insistence and blooming from where they began in a bright office at the Garrison, _Shirogane is the best of us, Keith, all you have to do is push buttons._ It's different when they've come a hundred billion miles from Earth, different because Shiro _is_ the best of them, and Keith is so afraid of watching him burn out like all the rest; like himself, lifted right off the surface of Kerberos and made to be a thing of fighting, losing over and over and again.

"Keith?" Shiro must take his silence for loss of signal or consciousness, whichever usually comes first. It's more the latter when Keith realizes that he can't feel his toes and fingers anymore. "Fuck, hang in there, stay with me- please, please, I won't let anything happen to you- _Keith_." He repeats this several times over in the course of an hour or so, and Keith slips in and out of dark for most of it. There isn't much else he can do; Black is busted, and he knows better than to leave with a mangled jetpack and a glowing tear in his suit that sucks all the warmth from his body, spiraling shivers of cold across his skin the longer he waits and fades and waits. Shiro swears like he's something worth the anger of a good man. Keith repeats the thought to himself three times over before it clicks; _man_ , somewhere when he wasn't looking it happened, and with the faults of his leadership on display across the universe, there's no question as to who's rising and who's in freefall waiting to pass the baton on the way down.

_Meet him halfway._ Keith still has fight in him, but Shiro is right. He can't go this alone, not anymore, and when the hatch to the cockpit rattles open to let Shiro in- every light under the console sears into the backs of his eyes like a new star forming.

 

* * *

 

Veronica gets a lead on how to access the Marmora base while Shiro is washing the pod chemicals from his sore body. The wristbands are still doing their job, even better than on Earth for some reason or another that Hunk and Matt tried to explain to him, but the result is the same- he's not without his aches, and he's managing. The thread of almost naive optimism pulls a stupid smile to his mouth before there's a knock at the door.

"Allura thinks we should move past the xanthorium clusters ASAP," Keith explains, when he's been let in to lean against the doorframe and Shiro's rummaging for a shirt beside his bunk. "Feeling up to it?"

"I think I should be asking you that."

"First come, first serve, Shirogane."

"Yes, _sir_."

The grin it buys before Keith turns away feels private, but then maybe it's because Shiro is half-clothed when he straightens to cross the room toward him, drawn by a rebellious thread that he blames on the near death experience. "Well? Do we need a rain-check, or are you quiet just so I'll listen?"

Keith's jaw tightens. "That doesn't make any sense."

"It does from where I'm standing."

"I'm going to take you off the damn mission."

Shiro braces his hands on either side of his head, half-giddy with the rise. It's a rare thing for Keith to get fed up with him -almost impossible when it comes to real anger- but with the highs of battle won and danger escaped winding them all tight, it's hard not to rile him up a little before they throw themselves back in. His hair tufts against the metal frame where he's loosed it from the tie, begging a comment that Shiro opens his mouth to deliver before pausing; pinned by a soft look, blue, aching fondness and bleeding want, he forgets the use of having Keith exasperated when instead he can have him like this. When Keith touches the trail of stray moisture down the side of his face, he reaches to press the gloved hand full against his cheek.

"Takashi," Keith says, uncharacteristically at ease when Shiro turns in closer, close enough that their heads touch, and Keith is the comet he's finally bypassed but the shadow of him pulls Shiro in like a black hole reaching-

An alarm blares through the Castle, shrill and demanding, and the two break away without a word.

Chasing down the intruder proves more than a task they'd anticipated, and by the time Ulaz explains his connection with Keith, brings the team to his base, discovers that they've been tracked somehow- everyone is back on edge and honed in on solving the problem, though that becomes trickier too between a series of close calls that end in narrow escape. Zarkon is tracking them somehow. It's evident first after they depart Olkarion and spend days on end trying to outrun the now mobile central command ship, up to hiding in the depths of a gigantic space storm and later avoiding any civilization while trying to piece together how they've been followed and why, but when Keith offers some hint of what he thinks is going on there's disbelief all around.

Veronica and Matt comb frantically through the systems for a bug they don't find. Allura spends silent hours piloting at the bridge after confiding her suspicions to them, and Shiro keeps up a defensive route around the Castle between wormhole jumps that are doing as much damage to the ship as the fire he doesn't manage to intercept from Galra fighters. Tensions run high all around. Hunk bakes to excess. Keith lashes out like he hasn't all month.

And then- he's gone. Allura admits to their consultation beforehand, which eases Shiro's mind somewhat but not entirely, and the rest of the team understands how isolating each variable could benefit their investigation, but doesn't exactly like the idea. In the meantime, Keith has them sent off to a planet Allura finds in need of assistance. Shiro leans on Black's console while the others group off into the hall for discussion, painfully aware that he's waiting like a kicked puppy for some further explanation, but unwilling to confess that he's loathe to push Keith like this. He settles by recognizing that their friendship has always been built on a give-take basis; Keith took, now he's gotta budge.

"Don't give me that look," Keith mutters through the screen. He's running a cloth halfheartedly along the helmet in his lap, like he needs something to occupy himself. "You would've done the same thing."

"No," Shiro answers, "I would've gone to my friend about what was going on and realized that- the problem isn't what I thought. Keith," he pushes off the console, "you can talk to me. Let me help."

Keith makes a sound, half huff, half laugh. "It's not that easy."

"Yes, it _is_."

"The world isn't black and white, Takashi," he says suddenly, stabbing his dagger into the arm of the pod chair, and Shiro watches how pale foam puffs around the tear like cloud-stuff. " _I'm_ not black and white, but choosing between potential capture and knowing that _I_ could've been the reason you're in danger- that's a no brainer. If you have a problem with it, talk to Allura." He reaches to shut off the video but pauses when Shiro says his name again, quieter. Hesitation comes in a tight jaw and knitted brows with him, sharp features cast blue by the pod lights, arm hovering out to a switch beside the camera that Shiro can't see.

"Be careful," he says, and then before he loses his nerve- "promise me. Fucking swear it, Keith, I'm serious."

Keith's resolve visibly wavers. He nods.

The mission goes pretty much as expected- which is to say, with a multitude of interruptions and split-second decisions. Admittedly, their defensive skills are something to be feared on their own but without Keith to plow through fighters like some avenging angel, it takes more effort to get out of the situation than it should- that's lacking Voltron itself, too. Eventually they've been cornered into near breaking just as the Black Lion shows up, Keith in tow, and they manage to make it out in one piece. The aftermath weighs on him like the sky on his shoulders when the team converges unhappily to discuss in the bridge.

Keith approaches Allura about something after they retreat to getting some rest. Shiro doesn't mean to pry, not at first, but hearing his name float through the open doorway after the group freezes him in his tracks, gripping him in that fear he thought he'd shaken of being the last to know why he should be off the job _again_.

"...no, you are the true Black Paladin. There can be only one."

"Then explain what the hell Zarkon was doing when my Lion went haywire, princess! Or how he's been tracking us through it- or how I feel like I've barely tapped into its powers by myself, just- I need to _know_. Is it possible, why would it happen?"

"I... suppose it could have something to do with Honerva's residual energy from their rift excursion. If Shiro's quintessence signature matched up correctly..." She pauses, and he worries his thumb over his lip, arms crossing by force of nervous habit. "But then, you know what that means." There's no response. "Keith, I understand that you want to give him a chance- I _do_ , so _don't_ give me that look. But Coran and I have been running scans on the Red Lion and her paladin since day one, and the results are conclusive; Shiro is sick."

There it is. A fact, irrefutable, the thing he's been running and running and running from for so long that the wind in his eyes stung worse for a while. Shiro slides down against the wall, willing his patience to win out until they've come to whatever decision is even in question here. "Regardless of the fact that withholding such information should cost you your position, he's tapping into his Lion's energy like a leech, Keith, and I cannot allow that to go on." The cut of her tone punches something out of Shiro's lungs. Breath, maybe, or pride. "I'm afraid we must find a new pilot for the Red Lion after we sever Zarkon's connection to Black."

Shiro knows what he's going to say next. "I'll fly it."

"Keith-"

"Black responded to him!"

"Black responded to _you!_ " Her shout rings down the hall, on and on until the echo fades. Shiro grips his hair in his hands, fear-motivated, unbearably angry though with whom is another question. "Do you think I haven't seen it before, Keith, did you think me so naive that it would fly over my head?! I have lived _centuries_ of a lifetime in which people sacrificed everything for each other on a daily basis, so don't try to _tell me_ that it isn't exactly what you are trying to do for him because it won't quiznacking work!" Shiro shoves up to his feet and starts off; he's heard enough, and there's a heat flaring up through his bones that propels him toward the hanger, sudden enough that it's hard to notice the difference in the pull. Rough, line tangled, dual strung like the farther he gets from Keith the faster it yanks, and yanks and _shoves_ -

He doesn't notice the wet in his eyes until Red's head lowers to nuzzle at where he lands on his knees. Her golden gaze flashes when he scrubs a sleeve over his face, laughing at the petulant, pathetic motion and whispering something cracked that opens Black's maw to yawning heights halfway across the hangar; it's the last thing he wants and the first, Keith's weary-rough voice pushing him toward the invitation like dark smoke choking out any other choice.

Maybe nothing else is black and white- but this is.

 

* * *

 

Keith watches the dreamscape warp like water along the ground, ripples of luminescence of stars stretching on where his feet land in wavering lines of gold and silver. Someone shouts in his peripheral; he whirls on the sound and finds himself in the middle of a fistfight between two blinding masses, the first a sick yellow-viridescent that bellows out something hateful at the whirling collection of shimmering reds, violets, colors blurring when they collide in an explosion of pure white, searing the backs of Keith's eyes when he throws up a hand to brace against the shockwave. It sends him spiraling into his bed again, but the vividness is what wakes him up.

He pants at the ceiling for a long time, lungs constricting, sweat beading and sticking his hair to his forehead. There's no telling what the hell that came from, but wondering gets put on hold when Veronica bangs on the door to tell him there's a fleet nearby.

The Galra pass them over for the first time in days. Matt assures them he hasn't enhanced the cloaking devices any more than he's tried, and Coran insists that the Castle was definitely visible on their radar- but somehow, Zarkon must've failed to pin their location at long last. Allura asks Keith whether he'd worked on his bond with Black sometime during the night and gets an unreadable twist in her expression when he shakes his head, but eventually they come to the conclusion that Black must have rejected Zarkon on its own after rescuing Keith from deep space. It doesn't make any less sense than their other theories, so that's something. 

"What if- it has something to do with what the druids? What they did to me?" Keith starts, half-assed, but Allura's the one with years of experience with that sort of quintessence manipulation, and when she shakes her head, he takes her word on it.

"A younger version of myself might've believed that would matter," she says. Something in it is reassuring, unspoken. "But we are who we are, Keith. Believe me, I understand." The knowing-ness troubles him briefly, but when Hunk pats his shoulder and Allura pulls him into a light embrace, he's sure that she's already parsed out the truth about his Galra blood, and somehow doesn't hold it against him any more than he holds the princess's Altean magic against her. Still there's a nagging at the back of Keith's head when he spots Shiro leaning against the door in the back of the bridge, arms crossed, weariness written into the tall lines of even the casual stance which no one else seems to pick up during their discussion. He doesn't seem entirely present.

Once they've finished scratching their heads and shrugging out the decision to keep on course for another week or so just in case, they disperse to shower or eat or finish waking up over typing out compulsory mission reports that Coran dutifully collects every time something worth archiving comes down the road. Keith sits on the kitchen counter and admits the strange dream while Shiro brews the space-equivalent of coffee to revive them. He has this curious half smile the whole time.

"What?" Keith asks, somewhere near the bottom of his mug and ten minutes to lights on.

Shiro shakes his head and pushes into Keith for a hug without another word, cup abandoned to wrap both arms around his middle and stay, and stay. "Nothing. Just really glad we're- not being tailed anymore, 's all." The explanation strikes him as a little odd, but it only takes a moment for Keith to set a light hand on Shiro's back. He shivers through his thin t-shirt. Keith mourns the days he was smaller, more in width than height, but smaller- when it was easy to pull all the aching points of him close like that day at the Kerberos launch, or before, when he was sitting roughed and alone while Keith's superiors explained regretfully how he probably wouldn't make it past year three. The anger of seeing how so many others had failed that kid propelled him into taking on the mentorship, but there's no fight here. Not anymore.

Shiro fixes a weary smile on him when he pulls back, which isn't much. "What?" Keith can't find the words, and he's afraid to move for fear of it being- badly timed, wrongly wanted, _something_ , but Shiro's making the first move now in brushing his hair off of his shoulder. "Don't tell me you're disappointed about missing all the action."

It isn't that. "I've had enough solo flying, Takashi."

"Then you'll have to let me pick up the slack, huh?" He straightens a bit, and they're at the same level like this. "Cover your ass for once?" Keith makes a little snorting noise, about to retort that he couldn't fight dirty to save his life like Keith when Shiro's hand trails up to hold his neck, the juncture where Keith's ear connects down to his jaw. "...let me take care of you, make up for all the times you bailed me out, _sir?_ " The intent behind it is unmistakable. That or Keith _is_ mistaken and Shiro is just getting cocky after another mission executed, mouthing off because it's who he _is_ ; he hinges on the possibility heavily even when a flush rises to his face, Shiro's smugness barely hidden when he finds Keith's hand on the counter and holds, and stays.

"You're my best friend," Keith lets slip, assaulted suddenly by the image of midnight drives, a dozen broken rules to take Shiro to the stars and watch him be quiet. Trying to imagine the look on his face when he finds out about Keith's reservations surrounding his Galra blood is like- trying to wipe the sky blank in that same memory. Shiro would hate him for it, hate him for the hypocrisy of it and the way he knows how this will play out; Allura is a considerate woman, but she's right, and Keith can't let Shiro burn out for them. "It's my job to keep you safe."

Miraculously, Shiro's face softens at the words instead of closing off. His knuckles trail down Keith's throat and his lips part. When the lights come on, it takes another minute for Keith to move away, jaw twitching while the briefing call rings through illuminating halls, ceaseless since day one.

The grind begins again after that, this time more intense than before. Everyone shuts out the extracurriculars to focus in on gathering as many new alliances as they can. Someone tips them a hint about a tech genius being held at the height of security in a Galra prison that might also hold clues to Katie's whereabouts; Keith and Matt seize on this opportunity as quick as they can, and once failing to locate Pidge but freeing their target engineer it's still more of a win than they've had in weeks. He repairs their teludav before Allura launches him down to Olkarion, much to the immense relief of the entire team. They return to the Balmera for the crystal he needs and find a fight there too.

Shiro is off his game for that one. Keith notices because it was his side job for too long to remember, but more than that; there's an empty space at his back in the night that follows him around wherever else Shiro doesn't reside. When it's occupied, he relaxes. When it's not, stays that way after the Red Lion takes a rough hit at the Balmera, and refuses to be remedied until Shiro gets out of the healing pod- the stress point is visceral. Worrying over that gets put on hold after he's invited to negotiate with the Marmora, and Shiro knows exactly when to volunteer as the others try to convince Keith that the second invite is too risky to pass up. They fly down in Red, meet with Kolivan, Antok, a dozen others without names but without faces either behind glowing masks, and Keith is already on edge by the time they mention bloodlines. He lashes -how couldn't he, the others can't know and not like this- but when his blade sits activated at the base of Antok's throat and they've all frozen in their tracks, Shiro is the one gripping the handle.

Keith goes to the Trials in his stead. They'd kill him, they'd tear him apart and he'd let it happen if he thought conceding would prove some point he's been fighting all these years. Keith goes to the Trials, and he beats everything they throw at him, and then some; he goes, and keeps going, and going and going until when he drops it's Shiro's hands he wakes to and Shiro's arms he crawls to and Shiro's quiet pleas he drowns in for too long. Part of him knows it isn't real. Part of him shatters like broken glass all the same at every promise.

"You don't need to fight by yourself anymore," Shiro breathes against the crown of his head, holding him together like- like it's _nothing_. "You don't need to protect me, Keith."

"If I- let you-" He can barely speak through rapid gasps of shallow air. "I'll- lose you-"

Shiro laughs, soft, desperately sad. "Look what happens. Baby, stop trying to get there first."

His greatest hopes and fears, they tell him afterward. The Trial ends when the Black Lion launches toward the base and another horde of soldiers flood the room like prowling, predatory things watching water dilute blood. Keith presses his blade into Shiro's hands through tears that bring his body bowing to the floor. The holograms shimmer away. He drops his head and shakes, curls his fingers into his hair and screams until the world goes black. It's only when all the breath leaves his lungs that oblivion washes out the pain.

When he wakes, it's to murmuring doctors and Allura's sad but proud smile, Hunk's open arms a refuge where he was sure he'd find none. The truth is out; his claws and fangs and eyes aren't the result of the witch's tampering but of his Galra roots, and when the Blade reveal info on his mother that leaves the rest of the team in shock, Keith explains what Ulaz had taken him aside in the Xanthorium base for. It's a crisis to have another day. Pulling her into the fight now is off the table, according to Kolivan, and they need this alliance like air. Besides, there's the question of the Black Lion after Shiro's actions come to light; his fight with Zarkon in the astral realm, his fear for Keith, but what shocks them all is Veronica and Matt's admission of dual piloting several flights under the radar, preparing for what may come if a swap was indeed needed. Turns out Veronica is quite cozy now with Green, Matt and Red go together like mac and cheese, and Allura's known how to fly every Lion on her own from the _beginning_.

"It isn't ideal," she admits, when Keith tries not to judge her for judging _him_ on withholding information when- well, the hypocrisy was warranted on her end, so that's something. "But if the occasion arises in which switching Lions is best, then our bonds need to be more malleable than ever. I can see that now. Without trust, even the best hearts wither." Hunk squeezes her shoulder warmly. "Many strengths do _not_ make a team; it's how we open our weaknesses to others and occupy them- _that_ is how we will win this war. Unity, if only for the sake of it."

"We're with you to the end, princess," says Antok, markedly kinder than before, but then Keith wonders how much of it is guilt when there's a gray eye on him the entire time he's in the room. Shiro isn't unscathed from Black's attempts to blast open the compound, but he hasn't left Keith's side.

"Agreed," Kolivan continues, "though there's something else we need to discuss about the Red Paladin." Keith takes a long breath, and Shiro's grip tightens on his arm. He's uncharacteristically expressionless.

When the final decision becomes obvious, he leaves the room as quiet as a shadow.

 

* * *

 

Keith finds him later on the observation deck. It's still sinking in, he thinks, but there's a regret he can't put a name to that chases down nervous relief to the pit of his stomach. Shiro's long since sunk into the ache continuing to surface throughout his limbs, and he's re-calibrated his wristbands once already; it's a dull tautness as old as his memory goes, but for once he's almost glad of the pain. At least his skin knows how to wear guilt, he wants to laugh. At least shame goes to his bones first when his heart turns to stone.

"I didn't mean to push," he starts, when the footfalls behind him have slowed and stopped. "I just- I wanted to understand, but it wasn't right how I did it."

Keith's as healed as he can be from the Trials already, but he's half-breathless like it takes too much to admit. "It's okay. Before was too soon, I... I thought you would've taken it wrong, like you were... cheating me out of something. You'd've never flown Black if it was like that."

"I wish I could say that wasn't true."

When Keith steps up to touch his arm, Shiro reaches up to take his hand instead, and he lets him. "Still, I should've been honest. I should've confronted Zarkon before you had to, made you talk before we just- let it go." After a pause in which Shiro rubs the back of his hand with his thumb, memorizing the spaces of his fingers, Keith says again, quieter, "I should've been honest." Somehow, Shiro knows he isn't talking about his Galra blood, his discussion with Allura or the subtle hope toward pushing him to pilot Black, the same way he knows the lines of restraint settling like tension in his stance. Keith might've been flighty when it came to authority and other Garrison personnel, but to see it here is a different feeling. Shiro wants to wipe the anxiety out of his eyes.

He moves to face him, picks up Keith's other hand. "No more secrets?"

"What do I keep telling you about me, Takashi?" His mouth twitches. It was a long shot anyway, but if Shiro's learned anything from this war so far, it's that people change. He and Keith are about the best living proof of that with their mismatched pieces; a half-Galra with so much dirty fight in him, pride and victory meaningless without his team and a human taking on the cosmos just to leave his mark on the stars, so much to lose, so much to learn. When Keith's head dips and he moves Shiro's hands to his waist, his back- he guesses this is another fragment to put on the list.

"You love me," he whispers into the crown of Keith's head, a mirror of the hologram but echoes of its confidence, like how it should be. "Is that it?" Keith gives a little breathless laugh. He slides his grip up Shiro's arms with rough fingers and looks up with wet eyes, emotion writ to overflow. Shiro has to blink, swallow hard in return before leaning down because he'd meant it; maybe misguided, maybe with poor timing, but every affection spoken to truth. When he tilts close, Keith meets him halfway.

_Trust_. It's the only thing he can ascribe the kiss to. Shiro thought when they'd collide it would be- fire, sparks and burning and something frantic, but this is better. Keith folds into it like shadows slip down the walls, sure, hands running over him like Shiro's the one made of smoke and dark, and it's hard to think of it as a rising-falling when they're on the same plane. 

For a minute there's no gravity. No war, no plans, no fear.

There's just _peace_.

**Author's Note:**

> aight so I've hit 33,680 with this original piece I'm working on, and I'd love to hear what other AU's I can write in the meantime to chill out for a while, so yall let me know:
> 
> 1\. Galra Shiro, Half-Galra Keith  
> 2\. Rebel Shiro, Blade member Keith  
> 3\. Superhero AU  
> 4\. Altean Prince Shiro, Champion Keith  
> 5\. another combo of any of these  
> 6\. cursed Now You See Me au with Keith as jack wilder and Shiro as agent rhodes someone else tell me ya fucking see it


End file.
